Monday, April 03, 2006

First they came for the Buddhas...

Remember what the Taliban did to the Buddhas of Bamiyan? Well, thanks to a fatwa against statues issued by Egypt's Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa, the antiquities of Egypt could be next:

A fatwa issued by Egypt's top religious authority which forbids the display of statues has art-lovers fearing it could be used by Islamic extremists as an excuse to destroy Egypt's historical heritage…

…many fear the edict could prod Islamic fundamentalists to attack Egypt's thousands of ancient and pharaonic statues on show at tourist sites across the country.

"We don't rule out that someone will enter the Karnak temple in Luxor or any other pharaonic temple and blow it up on the basis of the fatwa," Gamal al-Ghitani, editor of the literary Akhbar al-Adab magazine, said.

And Ken Livingstone’s mate Yussef al-Qaradawi agrees:

Qaradawi joined Gomaa in declaring that statues used for decoration are "haram" or un-Islamic.

"Islam proscribed statues, as long as they symbolise living entities such as human beings and animals," Qaradawi said on an Islamic website.

2 Comments:

The Taliban tried to destroy the Buddhas but failed pathetically. They had to call in Pakistani and Saudi demolition experts, see

http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/010650.php

Of course Pakistan and Saudi governments later shed crocodile tears and condemned the destruction. But this was probably just taqiyya for the benefit of those Buddhists who haven't yet been exterminated by the Jihad in the East (their day will come).

Like feral adolescents, bombheads demonstrate the psychology of vandalism. They cannot create anything, so the only way they can make their mark on the world is by destroying objects created by higher civilisations.